


Soul mates

by Zoya113



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Controversial but Hidgens is aromantic there I said it, F/M, I want to write Paul w autism but I think I keep messing it up, OH but this is the soulmate fic yeah, double whammy but Emma is demiromantic, implied Emma was abused, melissa is a lesbian but whats new, please tell me if it was horribly offensive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21953452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: Snippet collections of different Paulkins soulmate AU’s
Relationships: Emma Perkins & Henry Hidgens, Emma Perkins/ Paul Matthews, Implied Tom/Becky but neither of them are in it
Comments: 28
Kudos: 130





	1. Music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul is frightened about who his soulmate might be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna write a Christmas fic but I’ve been thinking abt soulmates

As a child, Paul fretted constantly over finding his soulmate. The word soulmate implied for sure they had to be a match, but what if they didn’t like him? What if he didn’t like them? 

On the day of his eight birthday, he was packing his homework into his bag when he noticed something scrawled in pen on the other side of his palm. 

‘Try math homework’ it said. 

It made him play with his hair anxiously. How could he marry someone who never did their homework? 

Ideally, his soulmate was someone who was organised and smart and kind and was always ready on time. 

His mother had told him not to worry so much. A soulmate is a soulmate, and he would love them regardless. But he always had his doubts. 

By the time he was twelve, he had started waking up to find bruises on his shoulders and his legs and he didn’t know where they were coming from. His parents didn’t know what to tell him either, and that was what really scared him.

One night, when he had woken up to a painful bruise on his shoulder that morning he pulled out a pen to make a scribble on his skin. 

He didn’t like to write on his skin because his teacher told the class drawing on your skin gives you ink poisoning. But he weighed out his choices, and this seemed like the right one. 

‘Hello?’ He wrote down in tiny little letters on the back of his hand just in case it was risky. 

He let it sit for an hour, but got no reply. 

‘Hello?’ He wrote a little bigger, anxious. ‘Are you okay? I have a bad bruise and I thought maybe you hurt yourself.’ He was bothered by how wonky his handwriting was. ‘So I asked.’ 

‘Don’t talk to me’ came the angry response. 

‘Why not? We’re soulmates,’ he had to start writing up his wrists now. ‘Aren’t we friends?’ 

‘If I get anything on my skin my dad with get mad. Stop writing to me’ 

He ran out of his bed to show his mother the message, waking her up from her sleep with a panicked, hurt cry. 

“Paul, Paul, what’s wrong?” His mother sat up, rubbing her eyes. 

“Look!” He held out his hand and was frustrated by how long it took her to read it all. 

“Oh, darling,” even his mother looked a little worried, but she didn’t say anything. “Don’t look so scared. You’ll find her one day and you two will fit perfectly.” 

By thirty, Paul had been forced to learn a few makeup tips. By his final year of high school Melissa had taught him how to use concealer and foundation to cover up all the bruises that continued to show up, and he still never tried to talk to contact her again.

Quite honestly, he was quite scared of whoever was on the other end. His soulmate seemed rough and tough and angry.

In his head, she was some six foot, ripped gangster decked out in leather jackets and chains. She did kickboxing and cadets and every other sport in the book.  
He shivered whenever he thought of her, and yet, on the rare occasion ink showed up on his skin he found himself adoring it.

His favourite occasion was when he was 27, and he woke up to find a little flower doodled on his hand. He sent a hundred different photos to Melissa, who was just as excited as him. 

But then things were silent. No writing, no bruises or cuts or marks. So that’s why when he woke up with a dark, purple ring around his left eye he freaked it. 

Melissa had to walk him through the steps of concealing it with makeup over the phone, and he was almost late to work because he kept crying it off. 

“Paul, what’s wrong?” Melissa had pulled him aside when she passed him in the hallway. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel so bad, Melissa,” he confessed. “I just wanted a normal soulmate, someone who was going to be like me! I wanted someone who just did what they were told and stayed out of trouble and was nice and kind!” Things were crumbling. This had been something weighing down on his shoulders since he was only a child, and now he couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Hey, Paul!” Melissa tried to hush him. “She’s gonna be your soulmate, Paul. You were made to click, to be together!” 

“That’s easy for you to say,” he hicced. Melissa had a girl who she spoke with regularly. Every day she came into work with sweet nothings written in beautiful cursive gel pen down both arms. “My soulmates hates me! She won’t talk to me!”

“She’s your soulmate!” Melissa gave him a shake, one hand searching through her purse for some concealer. “You’re crying off all your makeup.” She stood on the tips of her toes and dabbed some onto her fingers to cover up the bruise on Paul’s face. “You’re just being silly, Paul. You need to take a break. Why don’t you go down to Beanies and get yourself your morning coffee.”

He sniffled and rubbed his good eye clear of tears. That was right, he was so busy putting on makeup he hadn’t taken the time to get his morning coffee. “Thanks, Melissa. I will.”

He knew it was wrong, but he loved to see the barista who worked at the counter. She was a sweet, small girl who always listened to his ramblings and gave him her smirky little smile whenever he said something odd instead of laughing at him.  
And he loved her. Maybe that was part of why he stopped trying to contact his soulmate.

“Hi, what can I get for you?” She always greeted him the same way and with the same smile, but today the tone was missing. Her smile vanished after a second too. 

“Uh, just a black coffee, thanks,” he mumbled, dropping a tip into the jar. 

She tried to smile at him but it didn’t stick. 

Paul felt maybe something was wrong.  
“I um,” he leant forward, he wished he knew what to say. “It’s really nice outside today. It’s a really good day.” 

“Yeah?” That seemed like it bothered her. “Cool.” She finished up his drink faster than she usually did, and slid it across the table. She looked up at him, making brief eye contact. She gave him an extra strange look today before shrugging her own behaviour off. “Have a good day, man,” she told him, stifling a yawn but rubbing at her eyes.

When he didn’t pick up his drink she grabbed it, holding it out. “Here. All done. Enjoy.” 

He wondered why she had to be so sad today, when he was sad too. But as he took the drink from her hand he noticed a little bit of concealer on her fingers. 

He looked back up at her and her eyes found something else to look at, drifting to the side. 

There was a small bit of purple showing through a now faint layer of makeup. 

“Uh,” he almost couldn’t believe it, and without thinking he reached a hand out to her face, his thumb just brushing the side of her eye before she managed to stick up a hand and push him back. 

“Yo, what the hell man?” She stepped away from the counter, backing up. 

But now he could see the bruise for real. It was actually there. And it was just like his.  
Holy shit. Could she actually be the one? 

Was his soulmate not the muscled giant gang leader he thought she was? She was just a cute little barista? 

She wasn’t getting into fights in some shady alleyway, no not at all. Was someone hurting her? 

In all the time it had taken him to piece things together in his head Emma seemed to notice the makeup had come off. “Dude, take the coffee man and have a good day,” the platitude was rocky and frightened. 

Once the cup was in her hand she let out a quiet wince and spun around, pushing off to the break room before he could stop her. 

He watched her leave, his jaw hanging slack. She was his soulmate. Her, the love of his life. It was just what everyone told him, his soulmate would be just right for him. And the tiny little barista he didn’t even know the name of was he wanted for his future. 

He didn’t get her today. But one day, he would catch her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[[Black Friday spoilers]]]
> 
> ///bf lowkey implies they’re soulmates anyways let me write this okay


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma was a weird soul mark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a soulmate concept that originated on TikTok so idk how big it is yet, but it’s the soulmate au where the first place your soulmate touches you shows up on your skin

Jane had the most generic soul mark ever, when she turned 18, the hand on the arm type of guaranteed romance. Her mother had been so happy for her, taking photos of it from every angle on her little old camera. 

Emma’s soul mark was an ugly looking thing. Little black marks on the knuckles of her right hand. She would always catch it out of the corner of her eye and think she had spilled something on her skin. Her parents didn’t make a big deal of it at all. 

It was small and meaningless, like she was going to bump into her soulmate in the school halls and nothing more. 

“It looks like you’re going to punch someone,” Jane commented one day, playing with Emma’s fingers. “Maybe you should stop fighting kids in school.”

Emma rolled her eyes, keeping her hand in her pocket where it always stayed. “God. It’s the dumbest soul mark ever.” She didn’t ever want to talk about them with her sister.

Jane loved her story, how she met Tom. But Emma couldn’t stand it, for her sisters sake. Tom had touched Jane’s shoulder with the other hand, the thumb print didn’t match up. Jane wasn’t his soulmate. 

Emma had never helped her own case by wearing her rock climbing gloves the whole time she was in Guatemala, but by the time she was thirty and back in her home town starting a job in a shitty little dead-end coffee shop, she didn’t care anymore. She hadn’t met her soulmate in the best ten years of her life, then she probably never would 

Did she really care? 

And sometimes she could see herself slipping further away. In her little corner of Beanies she would slide all the cups across the desk and keep her hands to the machines, she took up wearing gloves when she was off work too. 

“It’s the middle of summer, Miss Emma,” her professor has chided her one day after class. “Why the gloves, dear?” 

Emma shrugged, pretending to focus on her work until he took one of her hands in his and gave her a look, asking if he could take them off. 

She rolled the gloves off for him, showing him the marks. “I hate them,” she told him coldly. “I bet I’ve already missed my soulmate.” 

“You haven’t met anyone yet?” He asked, running his fingers over the dark marks. “That’s perfectly fine, you know, my dearest. There are lots of people who aren’t don’t get a soul mark. I’ve never had one.” 

“Really, Professor?” She glanced up hopefully. It was a whole lot better than people telling her she had messed up for not finding the one. But romance just wasn’t her first priority. 

“But that’s between us, alright?” He hushed her, taking her right hand again and trying to imagine why the marks might be there.  
“Oh, why, look at this,” he put his fingertips over the black marks, “these are going to be someone else’s fingers right here.” He held his hand there so Emma could look at it. 

She didn’t quite know what point he was trying to make. It looked funny, like they were making a wall with their hands. “Thanks, Professor,” she nodded with an awkward smile, withdrawing her hand to glove it back up again. 

———————————————————

Emma was almost at the end of her shift when there was a sudden buzzing feeling in her fingertips. She shuddered, perhaps she should stop drinking so much of this shitty coffee. 

She gave her hand a shake, rubbing her thumb over the black marks on her fingertips. But the buzzing didn’t stop, it was like pins and needles. 

She grimaced and cracked her knuckles. It probably meant her soulmate was dying or some shit. She was about to ask her manager to come out and cover for her when the bell above the door rang. 

Emma heaved a sigh, shaking her hand again and returning to her spot and the counter. “Hi, can I help you?” She asked the tall man who was creeping up to the counter.

His eyes were wide and curious as he glanced around the shop, taking everything in. He was new here. And then his eyes fell onto her at the counter, and he almost stopped in his tracks, his jaw dropping ever so slightly and his cheeks flushing pink. “This shops only been open a couple months now, right?” He stammered, his hands shoved into his pockets. 

“Yeah. It’s new, it’s usually pretty quiet.” She wanted to tell him that was because their coffee sucked ass, but she kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t in the mood to be quippy when her hand was stinging and buzzing like that. 

“Um, I thought I’d take a break on my work and come down to check it out,” he shrugged, giving a forced laugh. “Pretty neat.” 

“Oh for sure,” she rolled her eyes with a dry laugh. 

“Oh uh, you like it?” He asked. 

Emma shook her head, leaning her elbows down on the counter so she could rest her head in her palm. “No. It kinda sucks if I’m honest. It’s mind numbingly boring, the joint is so quiet outside of rush hour. Everybody else just goes to Starbucks,” she gestured a hand out to the glass store front windows. “And I don’t blame ‘em.” She turned to her side to dawdle over to the machines to wipe them down. “Oh!” She whipped back around. “That’s probably not what you wanna hear when you’re about to order a coffee, sorry man,” she chuckled. “I’ll make it good. What can I get for you?” She wrapped her clearing rag tight around her hands, the buzzing loud and irritating. It was so annoying she could almost hear it out loud. 

“Um, it’s okay, that’s fine! Just a black coffee!” He pulled his wallet out, his hands clutched tightly around it.

Emma nodded, giving him a amiable, lop sided smile. “Sure thing.” She grabbed a take away cup. 

“Are you-are you new here?” He asked.

What a weird question. She turned her head enough to raise an eyebrow at him. 

“It’s just, I’m usually really good with faces. I’ve lived here my whole live and I recognise everyone. I know this town like the back of my hand!” He even held up his right hand for added emphasis. “But I don’t think I’ve seen you before.” 

Emma gave a small laugh. “I grew up here, I’ve just moved back.” She wasn’t going around giving strangers her life story. “Good with faces?” She had to ask.

“Um yeah!” He nodded up and down like he had to prove himself. “Like, I know the woman who owns this shop was one year above me in high school!” 

Emma couldn’t prove or disprove that fact, and she was actually starting to tune the man out. Her hand was doing something fierce. 

“So I thought you must be new. Sorry about that. I like your hair clip,” he admitted sheepishly. 

Emma brushed her buzzing hand over the green butterfly clip holding her hair out of her face. “Oh, this. My boss says if I’m not gonna wear the dumb uniform visor I’ve got to tie my hair up with something at least uniform-coloured. God, I’ve got to go out and get some bobby pins, this shit is so lame,” she snorted. Her filter was slipping just a little, she could barely feel her hand now and it was really starting to bug her. 

“I really like those sort of clips,” the tall man had a nervous laugh. “My friend used to wear them a lot in high school, and they remind me of her a little bit.” 

Emma nodded. “Your friend had some taste for sure then,” she joked, holding out his finished coffee. 

He flushed, his face turning red. He was confused, like he didn’t quite get that she was ribbing with him. 

“Here,” She prompted him to take the cup again when he was too busy standing and staring at her. 

“Oh, thanks,” he moved in to take the cup, his fingertips sliding up to her knuckles as he grabbed it. 

Almost as if it had never been there, the buzzing in her hand stopped. She looked down, almost to check if the marks were still there. And then back at the man, who was busy playing with his wallet so he could drop some change into the tip jar. 

“Uh, thank you! See you around!” He held up his left hand to wave, and this time, Emma could see the black marks on the underside of his fingers.


	3. Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His soulmate’s first words to him cause Paul a whole lot of strife

Going to the shops, like, ever, was an embarrassing nightmare for Paul.  
No one seemed to understand the struggle of your soulmate’s first words being ‘hi, can I help you?’ His heart stopped and started about ten times a day because at least three different employees stopped him in every shop. He would always sigh and apologise and ask if he was their soulmate. It opened up a bunch more questions, but most people just assumed he was hitting on them. 

His mechanism for coping with it was to ask for help looking for such outlandishly wild things that his soulmate would instantly know who he was, or they would just let him be.

It was wearing him down honestly, he hated going out. He enlisted Bill or Melissa to help him with his shopping most of the time, and when he went out alone he avoided employees like the plague. 

But then came the holiday season. His office was doing a ‘Secret Santa’ type of thing, and he had gotten Bill. When he tried to have Melissa come shopping with him Melissa told him she was ‘oooh, too busy, far too busy to come, just look at the time’ in a way that almost confirmed she was on the other receiving end of him this secret Santa. 

So he set off on his own, putting in his headphones but not playing any music, because if someone was going to ask if they could help he didn’t want to be rude. 

He had known Bill for years, but he had no clue what the man liked. His first idea was theatre tickets for him and Alice, but that was way over the twenty dollar budget. 

Maybe some barbecue supplies, it was just inherent for dad’s to like barbecues right? Wow, he really didn’t have a single clue. This was a train wreck. Just the worst. 

“Hey, can I help you?” An employee glanced over his shoulder as he was stocking the shelves.

Paul shook his head, it was ‘hi,’ not ‘hey.’ He liked easy give always like that. 

But then from one shop to the next, and to the next and to the next, and the ‘hi, can I help you?’ Was getting grating. 

His mind was wandering, maybe it wasn’t customer service. Maybe he would be lost, and someone would help him with directions, but that was silly because he knew his town back to front. 

“Hi, can I help you?” 

“Yeah. I’m looking for a left handed baseball.” 

“Like the glove?” 

“Nope. It’s a baseball with the stitching in a different section. That’s okay. You must not have it. Thanks for your help.” He had about a dozen bullshit products stored up in his head: thermal fans, geo-locators, a shirt with a picture of a haunted lighthouse, so many things that just don’t exist. He was so tired of the soulmate routine, it was a hard routine to keep up for this many years. And he was tired of shopping too, he had no clue what to get Bill. 

He trudged back down the road towards the office, glancing in through the Starbucks windows but cringing at how busy it was. He had to be back at work in ten, he would have to go to that new coffee place instead, and Paul hated new places.

It was quiet enough, but the smell of coffee in the air was different from Starbucks, a little more acidic almost.  
He pursed his lips and approached the counter, getting a look from the cute barista who was filling up a mug.

“Hi, can I help you?” The barista asked. 

“No. I don’t need anything from you,” he sighed. What was he gonna do? Ask if they sold grande-venti cups? He was almost too down to explain himself. “Just a black coffee, thanks.” The second he looked back up to make eye contact with the barista, the cup she was holding dropped from her hands and shattered all over the tiles. 

She let out a bothered sigh, lifting one leg up from the floor to avoid stepping in the coffee. She picked a rag up from the bench and dropped it down into the floor to soak up the mess. “Hey,” she finally looked up at him with a tired smile, rubbing her eyes. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” 

“Sorry, do I know you?” Paul was already a little unsettled from being in a strange environment, but now this girl was speaking to him like they were old friends.

“It’s me, idiot,” she held out her hand so he could see the words on it. “Definitely wasn’t how I thought you’d say it,” she rolled her eyes, giving him a look like she was trying to figure out everything about him at once. 

“Paul,” he stammered, trying to remember which hand his writing was on to show her. “I’m Paul,” he gave her the right hand, and she lay it in hers to read over the words as many times as she liked. 

“Hi Paul, I’m Emma.”


	4. Music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soulmate AU where you can hear the song stuck in your soulmate’s head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn’t gonna update this again lmao but I just liked this idea

Paul was burning holes into his keyboard with his stare. She was doing it again, he couldn’t stand it. 

“What’s that face for, Paul?” Bill asked, looking up from his work. 

“She’s doing it again,” he grumbled. 

“What song?”

“I don’t know the names!” He snapped. “Some musical theatre song again! Doesn’t she listen to anything else?” He questioned like it was an interrogation. 

“Well they are catchy, I can never get any of those mamma mia songs out of my head!” To further his point he began to hum. 

He clamped his hands over his ears, futile against the sounds inside his skull. “What’s the plot of Wicked?” 

“Oh is it from Wicked?” Bill’s interest was somewhat piqued. “I saw that with Alice when she was younger!” 

“This singer hits some crazy notes,” he commented, waiting for it to be over, but it just kept looping. “She’s gonna keep doing this all night, I know. It takes forever to get a song out of her head.” 

“Well at least it’s something,” Charlotte chimed in wistfully. 

Paul wasn’t usually one to talk about his soulmate around his coworkers, especially not these two with their unfortunate romance histories, but he drew a line at musical theatre.

———————————————————

“No, Zoey, it’s not a song,” Emma repeated for the tenth time. “It’s just dialogue!” 

“What do you mean, dialogue?” She rolled her eyes like she was being ridiculous.

“I mean, dialogue, Zoey, it’s like a monologue from a movie,” she gestured to her head before rolling it back. It was so hard to serve customers when every time she opened her mouth she already had something going on in her head. “Like, you know how you practice lines you know?”

“You can’t get dialogue stuck in your head, it’s not the same,” Zoey rolled her eyes and left to the backroom. 

Emma knew she wasn’t being crazy. No matter what Zoey said, she was sure she didn’t have the entirety of Kyle Ren’s speech from the last Jedi memorised.  
———————————————————

“What’s wrong Paul? You look exhausted,” Melissa looked up from her computer as he stormed into work half an hour late. “Traffic?” 

“No, it’s my soulmate again,” he groused, crossing his arms and marching to Melissa’s desk. “She can’t just go to sleep at a regular hour?”

“Awww, poor Paul, what’s the news?” She leant in to absorb the gossip. 

“Picture this, 3AM, I’ve just gotten to sleep, and I am forcibly woken up by the blaring of some song in my head, and even worse, it was in Spanish!” 

“So?” 

“What if my soulmate lives in Spain, Melissa? Do I have to start learning Spanish? Will I have to go over there to find her?” He moaned, letting his head sink into his hands to rest his tired eyes for a second. 

“Hey, it might just be a good song! You know, my soul mate,” she tapped her head, “hatsune miku, twenty four seven. And I don’t think she’s from Japan, man. Don’t know who it is, but I’m in love.”

“I don’t even know who that is, Melissa! And what if she is though? Should I start saving up for plane tickets now?”

Melissa shrugged. “Soul mates Paul, If you learn Spanish you’ll just have to enjoy it.” 

“Easy for you to say, how many languages can you speak?” 

She snorted, never passing up a moment to stroke her ego. “Ah, It’ll happen when it happens Paul. Just be patient.” 

———————————————————

“You’ve got a funny taste in music for someone like you, Emma,” Hidgens chuckled as he heard her humming again. 

“No, this is not my music, I can’t reiterate that enough,” she put her notebook down. “My soulmate’s music taste, if I could describe it- hmm, how do you say ‘songs that get white people turnt.’”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” he scratched at his neck, nothing coming to mind. 

“Oh you know, this is the third time this week they’ve listened to sweet Caroline, which is sure, a good song, but only when you hear it like once a season. No one actually still listens to it, right? No one actually puts that on a playlist.”

“Maybe your soulmate is Neil Diamond,” he joked. 

“Ew! Don’t be gross, Professor! Fine, bad example, but like, Blink 182, the Killers, I can’t go a week without hearing Don’t Stop Believin’, like, who is this guy? Someone’s dad?” 

Hidgens looked thoughtful but Emma knew he didn’t have any advice anyways.  
“Well it could always be worse.”

“Yeah? Why not?”

“Don’t be too mad about it, you’ll have to share a radio one day, Emma.” 

And that was a doomed fate for the both of them.  
—————————————————————————


End file.
